Advice to his 15 year-old nephew Peter Carr 1785:

"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks."

I’m not usually that emotional, but this letter from an educated farmer brought tears to my eyes.

I had this idea that I could rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The
first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we
are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult
to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.
I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, having seen the roping thing
before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it. After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up – 3 of them. I picked out a likely looking one,
stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope.

The deer just stood there and stared at me. I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold. The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it, it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope, and then received an education.

The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope.

That deer EXPLODED.

The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope and with some dignity. A deer– no Chance. That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined. The only upside is that they do not have as much stamina as many other animals.
A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head. At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope.
I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual.

Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer’s momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in. I didn’t want the deer to have to suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder – a little trap I had set before hand….kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my rope back.
Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when …… I
reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite
you and slide off to then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head–almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts. The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective. It seems like the deer was
biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now),
tricked it. While I kept it busy tearing the tendons out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose.
That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day.
Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp … I learned a long time ago that, when an animal – like a horse – strikes at you with their hooves and you can’t get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can
escape. This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy. I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run. The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head.

Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down..Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize
that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and
covering your head. I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away.

So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a rifle with a scope……to sort of even the odds!!

All these events are true so help me God… An Educated Farmer.

I was needing something to post on the blog this week so I asked daughter #3 to give me something about what guns and hunting mean to her. She gladly shares here thoughts below:

“A girl, a gun… do they go together? Do the principles of femininity match the heart and spirit of firearms and hunting? This may be a new concept to some, but my seven sisters and I would answer with an emphatic YES!

I am so grateful to have had a hunter as my dad! Ever since I can remember, Dad has found numerous ways to make guns fascinating to our entire family, to cultivate our love of hearty femininity, to foster a desire for adventure, and to create exciting memories. He first accomplished this through taking us on short day-hunts with him. I still remember my first deer hunt with him – I believe I was five at the time. We were living in northern VA at the time and he took me to a friend’s property, where we climbed an old, rickety ladder stand and sat for what seemed to be, in my young mind, hours and hours. At dusk we made our way home, and though we didn’t arrive bearing any trophies, that first hunt was successful in that it gave me a love for hunting at a young age. A few years later, we moved out in the country where we could shoot at almost any time, and Dad would often get out the rifles for target shooting experience. Sometimes we would compete; other times we would just unload shell after shell for the sheer pleasure of it. But my love for hunting really piqued a few years ago when I carried a gun and hunted by myself for the first time. Dad set me up in his favorite tree on some family property and then climbed his own stand several yards away to oversee the process. Though I didn’t get a trophy buck that day, I harvested some meat for the freezer and was ecstatic.

For me, being a young lady, hunting has provided a healthy, productive outlet for that poignant spirit of adventure every girl possesses. Dad has helped us find the proper balance between being feminine and lady-like and yet enjoying the thrill of an exciting day in the woods. So, again, the answer to the question is yes. Girls and guns are a perfect match! Do you need a Christmas gift for your daughter or granddaughter? Buy her a gorgeous, custom-made rifle stock from Accurate Innovations and then take her hunting with you. Give her experience with firearms. I am so grateful for this gift from my own father and hope for many more years of hunting with him." Kathryn

"[Tyranny cannot be safe] without a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace."

"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so."